Hamburg, Feb 2025
Hidden in Hamburg are famously based not in a normal venue but on board a pair of ships, permanently moored at the docks. The Golden Skull is on the Cap San Diego, a retired cargo ship that is also a museum, entry to which is included in the price of the game. With such a distinctive and atmospheric venue, it was quite a surprise to realise that in The Golden Skull we were exploring a Mayan temple with no connection to the ocean whatsoever.
But almost as soon as we’d begun the game, we’d lost all sense of being on a boat and were immersed in jungle archaeology, in a set design that progresses at an energetic pace from one scene to the next, ever deeper into the setting.
When you solve a puzzle it’s always rewarding to have confirmation you’ve done it correctly, whether that’s by a padlock popping open or a light switching on. The puzzle design here gives extremely clear confirmation – each successful solve is marked not just by audio but also by a brief moment of darkness and sometimes a voiceover advancing the plot.
In a typical Indiana Jones movie he starts as a bespectacled academic and progresses to an action hero, and this room has a similar progression from some more intellectual puzzles to having an increasingly physical emphasis, through a space that gives a real sense of exploration and adventure.
We played Golden Skull immediately before Neptune’s Curse, with the latter currently being the venue’s most acclaimed game. Comparing them carefully, I’d have to agree that that’s the more sophisticated and impressive of the two, but I probably enjoyed playing Golden Skull (even) more, for its visceral fun and sense of adventure – it’s just a rollicking good time. Plus there’s the entertaining disorientation of emerging from a Central American jungle to find you’re still on a historic German ship. 
